The Homeland Recap: Common Lies

As a lot of you know, Howard Gordon and Alex Gansa, the Homeland show runners, used to run 24. This week, they threw in a sly reference to their former lives — "I figure we got 24 hours, tops," Estes said, straight-faced. Then a reference not so sly: Peter, Carrie's new boss, put a hole in Brody's hand and demanded the truth. Uh, Jack Bauer would like his knife back, and maybe another show. Have you seen Touch? Me neither. Peter's effort at torture didn't work, and Carrie was left to try a softer form of persuasion.

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Howard and Alex have always hated the fact that lefties stamped 24 as pro-torture, most famously in a New Yorkerarticle. It was hard not to see this episode as a response to that criticism. So Carrie's plea for honesty worked, or at least seemed to. Time will tell whether Brody intends to keep up his side of the bargain and help the agency; as I wrote last week, I have my doubts. Watching Brody insist over and over that he'd never worn a suicide vest was a reminder, not that any should be needed, that he is a genuine psychopath. The CIA's lobby is inscribed with a quotation from the New Testament, John 8:31-32: Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. Brody disagrees. He'll lie even after he's been caught, lie all the way until the needle's in his arm, for no other reason than the sheer joy of it. Maybe he has a future in politics, after all.

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Carrie's relationship with the truth is more complicated. She can lie, certainly, but she doesn't revel in her falsehoods. And I sensed that when she told Brody that she wanted him to leave his wife and kids for her, she meant every word. Is it possible that some part of Carrie actually feels grateful to Brody for unmasking her illness last year, so she no longer had to hide it from Saul and the agency? A crazy idea, but then Carrie is crazy. (She's no psychopath, merely mentally ill; she and Brody belong on a very special dating site.) But maybe I'm wrong. Maybe Carrie couldn't care less about Brody and was lying through her teeth about her feelings for him. The lie would have been entirely justified — almost any lie is justified when you're trying to trick a terrorist who may have information about an attack on American soil — and creepy even so.

I expect a lot of you loved this episode, if for no other reason than the chance to see Carrie and Brody face-to-face, with her firmly in charge. I thought it had some nice moments but was overall a step down from the last couple weeks. At crucial times, it felt forced. First, I just didn't buy that Peter would stab Brody. Brody may be a suspected war criminal, but he's also a congressman, and membership has its privileges. Ditto Finn Walden's accident at the end. Car crashes are always a forced way to generate dramatic tension, and in this case the setup for the accident felt especially problematic. Finn and Dana Brody seem like solid kids. Nothing in their history suggested that they would suddenly decide to lead Finn's Secret Service agents on a high-speed chase through downtown D.C., culminating in a hit-and-run. Now Finn and Dana have a shared secret. How convenient.

Then, too, Jessica took Brody back awfully fast at the end, considering that he once again came home with a mysterious wound after disappearing overnight. And his explanation — "I work for the CIA" — ought to have raised as many questions as it answered: In that case, why did the crazy CIA lady come to our house last year claiming you were a terrorist?

But the most glaring flaw came at the episode's most crucial moment, when Carrie convinced Brody that he should break with Abu Nazir. He doesn't target leaders, Brody. He doesn't target the William Waldens of the world. He targets the little people. Walk me through that theory again, Carrie? When Abu Nazir convinced Brody to strap on a suicide vest, he was explicitly trying to kill none other than the vice president. There were no kids in that safe room. Yet Brody didn't argue the point with Carrie. Why? I don't know. Maybe that hole in his hand hurt too much.

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Alex Berenson, a former New York Times reporter, writes the best-selling series of spy novels featuring John Wells, a CIA operative and Muslim convert. (Yup, like Brody. Though Wells came first.) His original Wells book, The Faithful Spy, won the 2007 Edgar Award for best first novel. The Night Ranger, the seventh in the series, will be published in February. You can follow him on Twitter and Facebook.